Population approach is needed for heart disease prevention to reach more people

The current approach to preventing cardiovascular disease of focusing on individuals at high risk does “too little, too late for too few,” said experts at a conference in London this week. Instead, they suggest, a population approach aimed at changing lifestyle and treatment strategies is needed to prevent early onset of disease.

Nurses and high school graduates, not doctors, could be trained in this preventive work, Salim Yusuf, director of population health research at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, told the conference on coronary heart disease in south Asians, which was organised by the South Asian Health Foundation and held …